Hi everyone,
a few weeks ago Debbie inspired me to write up a (non-technical) tutorial for how to download flac's using bittorrent and convert them to mp3s (for personal use). I hope this (a) makes tapes a bit more accessible to people who would otherwise not be able to enjoy them (b) stops the posting of mp3s just because people can't figure out bittorrent and (c) finally put an end to those helpless posts from people repeatedly asking "I've downloaded the [torrent] file, but I can't get it to play in Windows Media".

I'm sure this isn't perfect, and I welcome edits. Hopefully it'll help someone out there. BTW, thanks to all the tapers out there. We all reap the benefit of the sacrifices you make to capture each show. Thank you!


For BT:
1. These instructions for Windows users only

2. Go download uTorrent and install it (http://download.utorrent.com/1.7.1/utorrent.exe)

3. Upon first launch, uTorrent will prompt you to do a "speed test". This is largely unnecessary. Just leave everything in section 1 alone.

a. Section 2 - ok, this is the biggie. Basically what you have to do is punch a hole in your firewall to allow traffic to flow between your computer and the computer's of your peers. What you want to do is first click the button "Test if port is forwarded properly'. Chances are that will fail. If it succeeds, your golden and move to step 4. If I fails:

b. You now need to punch that hole in your firewall. This can be done about a thousand different ways, and is way beyond the scope of this write up. If you're using any type of broadband router, you need to start there. You typically configure your router by using the administration page for your router (mine is at http://192.168.1.1) using your browser, logging in, and then go to port forwarding.

c. Like I said, I can't walk you through this step, but the goal is to figure out how to allow the port listed in the uTorrent speed test dialog listed next to the text "current port". Plug that number into your router/firewall (I'm afraid this is the part that looses a lot of people)

4. Now uTorrent is just sitting there waiting for a torrent file. A torrent file is a small text file that instructs the bittorrent client how to go out to the world and assemble the files you are looking for (probably 15-20 flac files). Bits and pieces of these files reside on every computer in the swarm. Basically, when you join the swarm by opening up a torrent file (e.g. http://bt.etree.org/download.php/50....flac16.torrent) you are now taking part in that swarm.

5. You will continue to not only download but also upload parts of your files to others as they need them for however long it takes to get to 100% complete. At this point, you are no longer a lecher, but a seeder. Being a seeder means you are helping the file sharing session continue by serving up a complete set of files. Please do this for a little while prior to deleting the torrent.

6. At this point you will have all the flac files on your local machine (in my documents\downloads). Go grab those flac files and run them through the process I've outlined below.

For FLAC
the free (but not quite as friendly) option - Go download the flac frontend from here (http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fl...irror=internap). Once you've installed that, add the files to the list and do a batch convert to wav. Once that's done, convert the wavs to mp3 using the out_lame plugin for WinAmp (http://out-lame.sourceforge.net/).

The no-so-free, but better option - I love CD-Tag. It makes the process of going from flac or shn to mp3 (or really converting any codec) much smoother. Plus it's got some nice tagging features. You can find it here (http://www.cdtag.com/). It's shareware, so grab it and use it for free then if ya like it.. buy it..


Last Edited By: dbrowning 07/18/2007 4:57 PM. Edited 1 times.